Don Luigi Condurro of L'antica Pizzeria da Michele, Naples:". . . To us the less you put on a pizza, better it will taste. Because to us pizza is made in this way. . . ."

Don Salvatore Grasso of Pizzeria Gorizia, Naples:"Now everything is pizza . . . Once we used to work in a utterly different way."

Antonio Pace:"There are no secrets in making pizza. . . ."

Don Salvatore Grasso of Pizzeria Gorizia, Naples:"There is only one secret, the makings ['preparazione']. That is it."

Giuseppe Tutino of Pizzeria Tutino, Naples:"I can assure you one thing. If you go to USA and you can speak on the subject, you can be able to make pizza like you make it here. No problem. Don't believe when they say the water, the sun . . . it exclusively depends on the pizzamaker skillfulness."

Enrico Palumbo of Pizzeria Brandi, Naples:"It takes experience to make a real pizza, being around and working with a lot of people, experiencing various work systems, and learning how to catch all the tips that all the masters put at your disposal."

Salvatore Pizio of Pizzeria Trianon da Ciro, Naples:"No one teaches you anything, you have to steal. . . ."

Another pizzaiolo of Pizzeria Trianon da Ciro:"You gotta live it to learn it."

In the video, Vincenzo, a tour guide, stated:"What we believe is the real pizza here in Naples is the one which does not need to be chewed, which melts in your mouth, goes straight through your throat and into your stomach."

I had seen this trick performed before in another video. The only thing that I can think of is that the basil leaf is supposed to strengthen and patch the hole on the bottom surface of the dough disc, so that the melted cheese would not ooze from the hole onto the oven floor. I do not know how practical this solution might be. Good day!

Dear Sub, thank you for the video. Let me add to that the following video, which shows Da Michele's dough room.

Notice that there are 7 open bags of Caputo flour sitting around the mixer. That is 175 kilos (about 385 pounds) of flour. This is an indication of how much dough they make per day. How many dough balls will come out of 175 kilos of flour (plus water, salt, and fresh yeast)?

it's a 56 liter Fork Mixer where they usually mix 145kg of dough twice a day (at 8am and 15pm)their volume 800-1200 pizza (650-700 pizza in 5 hours often on Saturday night service )The first 17-18 hours are only rising! The panielli then are used by about 10:00 (+2 hours) up to about 17 (+9 hours)The Pizza peel is made from Mahogany wood

. . . Also, how could you tell that your flour had gone bad? Did you have bugs in it?

Best regards,

TinRoof

Dear friends, I would like to share with you an experience that I had earlier today (and few times in the past). Few days ago and in another thread, I mentioned that my Caputo "00" Pizzeria flour had gone bad. Later, in the same thread, member Tinroofrusted asked me, "How could you tell that your flour had gone bad?" I replied:

"With respect to my Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour, it had gone bad because the dough mass remained relatively patchy and fragmentary throughout the kneading process. The dough stubbornly refused to form a proper gluten network throughout the mechanized kneading process. In other words, my point of pasta was out of reach or beyond the capacity of the dough to deliver. By the end of kneading and 20-minute rest period, the dough mass was still composed of patchy dough flesh and fragmentary dough skin. It was a chaos, no apropos uniformity of flesh and skin."

To my dismay, soon I found out that the new bag also contained ill flour! Throughout the entire mechanized kneading process, which took a little over 7 minutes (using my Santos fork mixer), I noticed that the dough was incapable of properly coming together and forming a cohesive whole; the dough remained relatively weak and amorphous. It failed to form a smooth and uniform dough mass with a decent flesh and skin. I felt like being struck by lightning twice! After the 7-minute knead, I let the dough mass rest for 20 minutes. Thereafter, I tried to gather the mass into a smooth ball as shown in the 1st picture attached hereunder. As you can see, the dough remained unruly and not fit enough to go under the initial fermentation.

Fortunately, a friend of mine let me borrow some of his Caputo "00" Pizzeria flour, a healthy one, which he had purchased two weeks ago. I followed the same exact recipe, portions of ingredients, and procedure. After 3 minutes and 42 seconds of mechanized kneading, the dough nicely reached my point of pasta, whereupon I stopped the mixer. Next, I allowed the dough to rest for 20 minutes, at the end of which I shaped the dough mass into a smooth ball as shown in the 2nd picture below. Significant difference! The dough had uniform flesh and skin, meaning:

1) A degree of elasticity (capability to return to an initial form after deformation),2) A degree of cohesiveness (agreeable attraction and unity of parts of the same kind that hold the whole mass in harmonious union),3) A degree of extensibility (capability to be extended in space) without breaking or tearing,4) A degree of receptivity to forming (the capability to receive and sustain forms/shapes), and5) A degree of gluten film development that possessed impermeability (capability to disallow gases to pass through the film) in order to elude loss of fermentation gases.

At that point, the dough was ready to undergo the initial fermentation. (Dear Mario, thank you for the flour.) Good day!

Fortunately, a friend of mine let me borrow some of his Caputo "00" Pizzeria flour, a healthy one, which he purchased two weeks ago. I followed the same exact recipe, portions of ingredients, and procedure. After 3 minutes and 42 seconds of mechanized kneading, the dough nicely reached my point of pasta, and I stopped the mixer. Next, I allowed the dough to rest for 20 minutes, at the end of which I formed the dough mass into a smooth ball as shown in the 2nd picture below. Significant difference! The dough had uniform flesh and skin, ready to undergo the initial fermentation. (Dear Mario, thank you for the flour.)

I'm working on my dough procedure (still a lot to learn) I do not understand how you can knead the dough so little with your Santos.I know with long fermentation you should knead as little as possible but on the youtube videos I see often 20 minutes of kneading with fork mixer.

the flour probably be poorly stored, the bag was still far from the expiration date ?

That's why I was afraid to order a Caputo pizzeria bag, I wish they sell 10kg bags.

On the technical data of the flour we can read: temperature storage (fresh and airy place) 15-18°C

I'm working on my dough procedure (still a lot to learn) I do not understand how you can knead the dough so little with your Santos.I know with long fermentation you should knead as little as possible but on the youtube videos I see often 20 minutes of kneading with fork mixer.

Can you please enlighten me ?

Cheers, Christophe

Dear Sub, yes, I think the flour was not stored under proper conditions. The expiration date printed on the bag is Nov. 18, 2013.

In your above-referenced post, you wrote, "I do not understand how you can knead the dough so little with your Santos. I know with long fermentation you should knead as little as possible but on the youtube videos I see often 20 minutes of kneading with fork mixer. Can you please enlighten me?"

Santos fork mixer handles dough differently than professional fork mixers such as those manufactured by Pietroberto or Mecnosud, which is the one used by Mr. Roberto Caporuscio in the video. Since the dough capacity of Santos is much lower and its fork speed way faster than a professional fork mixer, it intensifies the process of dough mixing. As a result, dough development happens much faster.

The dough capacity of Santos is 5 kilos. (The second dough batch that I prepared yesterday, in Reply #2117 above, weighed 2.5 kilos.) In contrast, the dough capacity of Roberto's Mecnosud is 60 kilos. (The dough batch in the Kesté video probably weighed over 40 kilos.) In addition, the fork speed of Santos is 84 RPM (revolutions per minute) while the fork speed of Roberto's Mecnosud is about 30 RPM. So, I believe the inverse relation between the "dough capacities" and "fork speeds" of the aforementioned mixers accounts for the amount of time needed by each mixer to develop a dough batch.

Santo fork mixer is an interesting mixer. I did not think about it this way at all in the beginning. In fact, I used to execrate it as a useless piece of junk. However, once I took the time and diligence to understand how it works, and accordingly learned how to effectively manipulate it, I began liking the mixer. It is not an easy, autopilot type of mixer; nonetheless, it can prove to be a very instrumental tool for home-bakers who work with highly hydrated doughs. So far, I have gone all the way up to 110% of hydration, without any problems, in making certain types of bread doughs with Santos. The mixer functions well with high-hydrated doughs, but not as good with hydrations under 60%, in my opinion.

By the way, reducing its fork speed to 40 RPM or below—which I finally managed to do with the help of a friend—will not make Santos a better mixer for the purpose of making Neapolitan dough. Why? Because the dough capacity—hence, dough weight—is so low that no effective mixing and kneading get done; the dough sticks to the walls of the bowl and stays there (because of its relatively light weight) rather than falling down on the fork and bottom of the bowl. I hope this makes sense.

The first video below, demonstrates a Santos mixer, which is mine, working at 84 RPM. The second video, shows a Santos, which belongs to a member of this forum, at work at 21 RPM. The former is kneading a dough (about 3 kilos) that is higher in hydration than the latter (about 5 kilos or more). Good day!

Sir, I have a Santos mixer also, I would like to slow down the fork speed. Would you share with how I can achieve this. Much appreciated, Vin

Dear Vincenzo, it was about a year ago when my friend (an electronic engineer who lives in Russia now) helped me to reduce the RPM of my Santos motor without any modifications to the mixer. Unfortunately, I do not remember the details of how he accomplished this. Basically, he used an electronic module that, if I remember correctly, would send electric pulses to the Santos motor at longer intervals (without reducing the 60Hz frequency) in order to emulate 30Hz or lower frequencies, hence reducing the RPM of the motor by half or lower. I will send him an email to provide me with details. I will inform you.

You may experience it differently, but according to my experience, Santos fork mixer does not function well at very low fork speeds. Please, take a look at the second video in Reply #2122 above, and notice that the dough batch (which is about 5 kilos or more) is hardly getting kneaded at fork speed of 21 RPM—simply because the dough is not massive/heavy enough to promptly disengage itself from the wall of the mixer bowl and fall down to reengage with the fork. The smaller the dough batch, the worse this problem becomes. How big of a dough batch do you usually make? Again, because of its physical limitations, Santos can never function like a Pietroberto or Mecnosud fork mixer, if that is what you have in mind.

Please, check out the video below (which features a Pietroberto fork mixer, model La Vittoria 200, of much higher dough capacity than Santos), and compare its kneading action with the second Santos video above. Good night!